


Adaptation

by sparrow2000



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25496110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrow2000/pseuds/sparrow2000
Summary: Giles is drinking in the afternoon; Xander asks why and an unexpected conversation ensues. This is set two years after S7. I pay no attention to the comics. :)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Summer of Giles





	Adaptation

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Joss and Mutant Enemy et al, own everything. I own nothing.  
> Comments and feedback are cuddled and called George  
> Beta extraordinaire, as always: thismaz  
> Written for 2020 summer_of_giles

Giles eased the cork out of the bottle of Talisker and poured himself a small glass. After a scant moment’s consideration he made it a double. Just as Sherlock Holmes had deemed that some things were a two-pipe problem, he decided that the current situation was a two-measure problem. Or possibly a two-glass problem. He hadn’t decided which. He took an appreciative sip and the slow burn started down his throat coming to rest as a warm glow in his belly. A belly that suddenly complained it hadn’t had lunch, or even breakfast for that matter. He thought his stomach should be used to it by now. As Head Watcher simple things like food and sleep seemed to go out of the window far too often.

He cocked one hip against the side of his desk, cradled his glass and closed his eyes, reliving every moment and every word of the 15 minutes before. Definitely a two-glass problem, he decided. Maybe. If he got the opportunity to drink in peace.

He bit back a curse at the sound of a soft rap on the doorjamb. “Giles?”

He opened his eyes, considering whether he should hide the whisky, but it wasn’t the first time Xander had seen him with a drink in his hand and it probably wouldn’t be the last. He straightened up and turned. Xander was standing in the open doorway.

“Xander,” he said. “Was there something you needed?”

Xander shrugged. “No, not so much. Can I come in?”

“Of course, please.”

Xander smiled, entered the study and, after a momentary hesitation, closed the door behind him. “I’d ask if you were okay, but since you’re breaking out the good stuff in the middle of the afternoon instead of reaching for the Earl Grey, I’d say not. Has apocalypse season started early?”

Giles placed his glass on the corner of his desk. He took a step back and shoved his hands in his pockets. They bunched into fists without his permission. “No impending apocalypse so far as I’m aware.”

“Just hurricane Buffy tearing up your peace of mind?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Giles sounded defensive, even to himself.

“She passed me as I came up the walkway. Self-preservation made me step out of the way, if you know what I mean.” Xander paused. “Rule number one of being a Slayerette, never get in the way of a Slayer in a snit.”

Giles wondered if Xander could see his fingers bunch and release in his pockets. He decided he didn’t care. “I thought rule number one was don’t die?”

Xander stood silent, watching him, before walking up to the desk and picking up the whisky glass. “That one goes without saying, so I took it off the roster. Here,” he said, offering the glass. “You look like you need it.”

Giles stared at it for a second before pulling his hands out of his pockets and reclaiming his drink.

“You don’t have the luxury, do you?” Xander continued.

“Of what? Dying?”

“Well I’d rather you didn’t do that, because I’d have one less person to annoy. But I actually meant self-preservation. At least when it comes to Buffy, you’ve always got to lay yourself out there. You don’t get to step off the walkway, metaphorical or otherwise.”

“I tried that once, many years ago when I thought it was time she stood on her own two feet.” The edges where the thistle design was etched into the surface of the crystal tumbler were sharp against the palm of Giles’ hand. “If you recall it didn’t end well. Since then I have tried to deliver whatever she needs of me.”

“Even if that means losing a few layers of skin when she’s upset?”

“She has reason to be upset. We lost two Slayers last night in South America.”

“Yeah, I know. I read the duty logs this morning. It was a shitty way to start the day.”

“Indeed.”

“So Buffy’s upset. We’re all upset. We’ve had better days, but it kind of goes with the territory. What did she say to get through the tweed armour?”

Giles stared out of the French doors at the opposite end of the study. Along with the small fireplace, the elegant full-length glass doors were one of the reasons he’d claimed this room as his own when they’d finally found a house in Cleveland. It had a beautiful view of the garden where he could usually get some perspective on the crisis du jour. Today a group of the younger slayers were tossing a ball around. They looked like any group of normal teenage girls on a bright spring day, except that the ball was going far too fast. The whisky suddenly tasted sour in his mouth. “It’s my fault,” he said.

“Your fault?” Xander repeated. “What, that two Slayers died? Or just your fault generally because you’re always going to be older than us, which always makes you the adult in the room?”

“Shall we say that it is probably a little of both and leave it there?”

“Okay, that’s just…” Xander stopped and scratched at the corner of his eyepatch. “You know what, I think you’re onto something with the whisky.” Not waiting for permission, he opened the bottom drawer of the desk and liberated the bottle, and another small crystal tumbler. He poured himself a modest measure. “Do you want a top up?” he asked.

“I had better not,” Giles replied, despite his earlier two glass temptation. He made a mental note to find a new hiding place for the bottle, not only from Xander, but from himself. “God forbid I should be found drunk and incapable in the middle of the day.”

"That’s the spirit,” Xander said. “Got to keep up appearances when you’re Head Watcher. Remind me never to be in that position, not that it’s ever going to happen.” He ambled across the study to the French doors and sipped slowly at his drink, watching the girls at their game.

Giles stayed by his desk. He still had a clear view of the girls at play. It would be easy to ask Xander to leave, but he had a feeling that asking would not bring about the desired result. So he waited and he watched, and Xander stood in profile, his eyepatch stark against his tanned skin. It was impossible to interpret his expression so Giles held his peace and waited for Xander to continue if he felt so inclined.

“How exactly are these particular Slayers’ deaths your fault?” Xander said finally. He kept watching the game in the garden. Somehow it made it easier for Giles to relax just a little, a detail that he suspected Xander knew only too well. “The report said they saved a lot of lives. But it also said they went off on their own without any back up. It was their call, and we weren’t there, so we can’t say one way or another, what was right or wrong. So we have to respect that they made a field decision. Slaying is a shitty gig. I know knowing that doesn’t make each death any less hard to swallow, but it doesn’t make it your fault either.”

“Buffy thinks it is her fault. That’s why she was upset.”

Xander glanced over his shoulder at Giles before turning his attention back to the garden. “Okay, I feel like we’re kind of going around in circles. Why does Buffy think it was her fault?”

“Because of the empowering spell.” Giles watched one of the younger slayers throw the ball the whole length of the garden. It disappeared over the hedge at the end. He could hear the cries of ‘foul’ through the closed doors. “When she was the only Slayer, she only had to worry about keeping herself alive. But now she feels responsible for so many and feels guilty that if she had been up to the task when we were battling the First, perhaps we wouldn’t have needed to do the spell.”

Xander turned away from the window and cocked his head. “There’s some twisted Buffy logic in there, and I can kind of get it, even though it’s not true. I mean, she wasn’t only worrying about keeping herself alive. She spent a lot of time worrying about keeping us all alive too and that’s not changed. And Faith was there too, so technically she wasn't the only Slayer on deck. So I’m probably being dense here, but still not sure how it translates into her driving you to drink?”

“You mentioned that I’ll always be the adult in the room because I’ll always be older than all of you, however grown up you are?”

“Yeah, and…”

“Buffy has come to the conclusion that as the adult in the room when we were facing the First, I should have put my foot down on the idea of the spell, or at least advised caution.”

“Okaaaay. She does remember that we had our backs to the wall and that even if we’d gone down swinging, we’d probably still have gone down.”

“She hasn’t forgotten. As well as feeling guilty that she was unable to beat the First without empowering the potentials, she also feels guilty that she placed the burden of responsibility she so often railed about herself on the shoulders of others, without fully understanding the implications.”

Xander raised his glass to his lips, then lowered it without taking a drink. “God, we’re fucked up, aren’t we? I’m guessing that the implications we’re talking about are that other girls, once they were Slayers, could potentially die. So the dot, dot, dot is that you should have stuck up your hand and said, ‘hey, before we do this, here’s some stuff you might want to think about.’”

“In a nutshell, yes,” Giles replied.

“But the spell was nearly two years ago,” Xander said. “I know we lost Slayers at the start and a lot of that had to do with us not being able to organize our way out of a paper sack when we left Sunnydale. Then we got better. But evil is still out there and better or not, Slayers still die, and so do Watchers, and so do bystanders. We try our best, but sometimes our best still isn’t enough.”

“I don’t disagree. It is a fact that keeps me up at night. And I said as much to Buffy, but I am mindful of the proverbial straw and camel. Of course, every death is personal. I am glad that is the case. It makes us different from the old guard and I hope to god we never lose that outlook. But I think that these last deaths are simply two too many at the end of a long, hard couple of years and it has brought this swath of guilt to the surface for her.

“And now it’s your job to ease that guilt by taking it on yourself.”

“As I have said, it is my job to give her what she needs.”

Xander waved his free hand in Giles’ general direction. “Did anyone ever tell you your job kind of sucks, Giles?”

“I believe some impertinent Californian teenagers probably intimated that at some point or another, yes.”

“Well I’m not a teenager anymore, but I’m still a Cali boy and I’m probably still impertinent, so I’ll say it again. Your job sucks.”

“I will give you points for consistency of sentiment at the very least.”

Xander raised his glass in a toast. “I’ll take that for the win. Thanks big guy.” He leaned back against the glass of the doors and closed his eye.

Giles watched him curiously. He’d come to understand Xander better over the years, but still found it unexpectedly surprising to realise that the impertinent boy had become a thoughtful man, at least on occasion.

Xander opened his eye. “Okay, I’m having some thoughts here. You can probably tell by the noise and the smoke.”

“Xander, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Try to distract me with jokes. You’re getting too old and your modus operandi for distraction is transparent after all these years.”

“You’re not leaving me much, are you?”

“My apologies. I had thought that respecting your opinion as an adult and a colleague was sufficient these days.”

“Just not as adult as you, with you always being the older adult in the room.”

“Indeed.”

“You said that once already, but no one says it quite like you, so I’ll give you a pass, and check the jokes. But seriously, I think I’ve got some stuff I’d like to say and you’ll have to bear with me while I go get something.” He crossed the room and deposited his half empty glass on the mantelpiece. “I’ve always been better at the show than the tell, despite never shutting up.”

Before Giles could answer, Xander had left the room. Giles heard his feet hammering on the stairs as he took them two at a time. Giles sipped slowly on his whisky and tried to remember the last time he’d taken the stairs like that. He’d had so many knocks over the years it was almost impossible to pinpoint the exact one that made his hip and knee joints ache after too much exertion.

His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps clattering back down the stairs. He turned as Xander strode back into the room, back heeling the door closed behind him again. He had one hand clenched and the other raking through his hair.

“That was fast,” Giles said.

“One good thing about coming out of Sunnydale with very little is that the things I took with me are pretty easy to find.”

“And what did you find?”

“This.” Xander opened his hand. A small grey rock fit neatly into in his palm. It had tracings of a pattern on the top side. “Take it,” he said.

Giles hesitated before placing his glass back on his desk. He took the rock from Xander’s hand and traced the fine indentations on the surface with his fingers. There was a vaguely oval outline, with a ridged, segmented centre running most of its full length. Parallel ridges fanned out horizontally on each side of the core, with a kind of semi-circular smoother section at the head. Even in such a vague outline in stone it looked ancient and alien. “It’s a trilobite fossil, yes?”

“Yep.”

“It’s a fine specimen.”

“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t really know much about fossils, but I’ve always liked it.”

“Where did you get it? It must have value to you if you had it when we evacuated from Sunnydale.”

Xander reached out and took the rock back from Giles, cradling it back in the palm of his hand. “My Uncle Rory gave me it when I was a kid. Maybe eight or nine.” He rubbed the edge of the stone gently with his thumb before looking back up at Giles. “You guys always knew Rory as a bit of a drunk. My crazy taxidermist uncle, lurching from one DUI to another. But he was quite the adventurer when he was younger. I don’t think he ever made it off the continent, but he travelled all over the States and got into trouble in more than one South American country.”

“And that’s where he was fossil hunting?”

“No, he got this one in Canada. Ever heard of the Burgess Shale?”

“Of course. It’s in the Rockies, isn’t it? My geological knowledge is somewhat lacking, but I believe it is an incredibly important fossil site. Possibly one of the most important in the world, if memory serves.”

“That’s what I’ve read,” Xander replied.

“If it’s not too delicate a question, may I ask how your uncle came to have this specimen? My understanding is that visitors are not allowed to take fossils away from a site of important scientific study.”

“You’re not wrong. Basically he stole it. I have no idea how, but I gave up years ago trying to work out how Rory acquired some of his more exotic items. But he did tell me he visited the Burgess Shale years ago and joined a hike up to the fossil beds, and somehow this little rock jumped into his pocket.”

“Quite miraculous,” Giles said.

“Praise the Lord,” Xander replied. “I’m just glad he wasn’t a Pulp Fiction fan, because I hate to think where he might have hidden it.”

“Thank you for that extremely disturbing image, Xander,” Giles said. “If I hadn’t needed a drink before, I may have needed one after that comment.” He picked his glass back up to punctuate his comment. “As edifying as this glimpse into your uncle’s criminal exploits is, I’m not sure what this has to do with my discussion with Buffy.”

“See, that’s what I’m coming to.” Xander looked around the study. He gestured towards one of the battered leather chairs by the fireplace. “Do you mind?”

“What? No, no of course not. Please, sit,” Giles replied. “You don’t need to ask.”

“I know, but I’m trying out this whole politeness thing to see if it works for me. Except when it comes to your booze, then I just go ahead and take it.” Xander rescued his glass from the mantlepiece and settled in the chair facing the door. He placed the fossil carefully on the chair arm.

“I had noticed,” Giles replied, sitting opposite. “So now we are more comfortable, would you care to explain?”

“You know I’d never been out of Sunnydale until I graduated high school and that wasn't exactly a roaring success,” Xander replied. “But man, Rory used to talk to me. Actually talk to me, this little snot nosed kid. He’d talk about his adventures and his travels. The places he’d seen and the stuff he’d done. Even the dumb shit.” Xander grinned. “Especially the dumb shit. I don’t think he was trying to teach me life lessons or anything. He just used to like telling tales and I liked listening.”

“I’m sure he was glad to have such a receptive listener.”

“I guess so. He made me want to go places, Giles. You know, see stuff. Maybe do some dumb shit of my own just so I could say that I had. And maybe do some cool stuff too.”

“I would say that in the last few years you have fulfilled your ambitions. And before you say anything, I don’t mean doing the dumb shit.”

“Oh I’ve done a lot of that,” Xander replied.

“I don’t doubt it. You’re human. You’re still in your twenties. It’s genetic. I shudder to think of some of the dumb shit of my own in that same time period and afterwards. But you have also seen things and done things that have made a real difference, Xander. I hope you know that?”

Xander flushed. Giles thought it made him look about 16. He had a momentary regret that he couldn’t remember ever giving 16-year-old Xander such a compliment or attention. He wondered fleetingly what might have happened if he had, but it was just another regret to add to the load he already carried.

“Thanks Giles,” Xander said. His flush died away, but he ducked his head and smiled. “I know I’ve done some good stuff, but it’s nice to get the confirmation. I guess this being an adult thing is about self-awareness as much as anything. I see myself more clearly now, despite only having the one eye. Rory may not have made it off the Americas, but it’s because of him that I wanted to go to Africa. He used to talk about wanting to travel around the different countries there and I guess it made me wonder what they might be like.”

“I’d sometimes wondered quite why you chose to go so far from home.”

“Now you know. But you’re thinking what has all this got to do with the price of fish? Africa made me look at myself. But it also made me look at the rest of us - the Scoobies. It made me look at our history, our relationships, the battles we fought, and the choices we made.”

“And?’

“I thought a lot about those last days. The battle with the First.” He scratched lightly across his eye patch. “Caleb - difficult to forget him. General Buffy. Wood. Spike, you, Anya. The whole damn shooting match.”

“It was a difficult time. Did these deep thoughts bring any new conclusions?”

“Yeah. It was a shit show and we were lucky to get out of there by the skin of our teeth. But as I travelled, more and more I was thinking about a household of scared teenage girls who’d lost their parents and had a bunch of eyeless freaks chasing them halfway around the world. And from that, it was only a hop, skip and a wobble to the spell. It was kind of difficult not to go down that road when I was trekking around bits of Africa trying to track down girls who’d got the whole upgrade package as a result of what we did. You know, as a result of us not being able to deal with the First.”

“It seems you did a lot of contemplating while you were away. I’d say I was impressed, but that would sound patronising and I believe I’ve had my quota of being called patronising for the day.”

“Patronise away, I’m good with it,” Xander replied. “But yeah, I thought a lot. And I came to a couple of conclusions and I think they’re both relevant to the upset Buffy sitch. First of all, it was about ‘us’ not being able to deal with the First, not Buffy not being able to deal. We were all in it. All not coping. Buffy was always the Slayer, but since junior high, it’s always been ‘us’, even when she didn’t want us involved.

“Musketeers,” Giles said.

“Exactly. The numbers have gone up and down over the years, but that Dumas guy had the right idea. My point is that if Buffy is going to feel guilty about not being up to fighting the First without the spell, then we’re all guilty.”

“A reasonable point, although not one she’d probably agree with right now. And your second conclusion?”

“This fossil. I carried it with me out of Sunnydale. I carried with me all over Africa. It’s like a lucky charm, I guess. The fossil is a life preserved. It’s millions of years old, but it’s still here in this rock. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think”?

“Indeed it is. But I’m not entirely clear where you are going with this.”

“I wasn’t sure where I was going with it for the longest time. Initially, for me it was just about how mind blowing it was that this little guy is still with us in some form. And in places like the Burgess Shale there are a ton just like him, or her, or it - I’m never quite sure on that count. But then I got to thinking about why fossils are important. You know, they preserve life that isn’t with us anymore. They tell us about what came before. Because new life comes along and takes over.”

“That’s evolution in action,” Giles said.

“And that’s my point,” Xander replied. “It’s what I’d been trying to work through in my head these last few months. The Burgess Shale and other fossil sites have been there for millions of years, waiting to be uncovered. When they’re discovered we understand more about evolution. It got me thinking about those scared girls, the potentials. They were waiting to be discovered, you know, by the Slayer spirit, or however it works and one of them would turn from being a potential into a Slayer. That’s how it’s been for hundreds of years.”

Giles leaned forward, the crystal tumbler balanced on his knee. “But evolution is about adaptation. And you are proposing that what we did with the spell was about the evolution of the Slayer spirit, yes? Instead of one to one, it became one to many.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. And that’s why you’re the Head Watcher. It’s taken me months of chewing this over to get that far, and Bam!, you jump right to it. The spell was about adaptation. About evolution. And even if we’d been up to fighting the First on our own, at some point there would have been something we couldn’t fight, or that the folks who come after us somewhere down the line couldn’t fight. And at that point, we or they would have adapted. The Slayer spirit would have adapted and evolved.

“And left an imprint of a fossil of a single Slayer in our collective memory to remind us that before the many, there was the one - the direct tie back to the first Slayer.”

“That’s kind of where I landed, but I needed you to put into words.”

Giles stood and walked back over to the French doors. The gaggle of Slayers had disappeared, but Buffy was down by the hedge, doing slow, graceful tai chi moves. She looked beautiful and deadly and the thought of failing her again made his heart ache. He turned back to look at Xander. “You know there is a quote that’s often attributed to Darwin - ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.’ It is somewhat apt in this discussion, I think.”

“It sounds about right,” Xander agreed. “But I kind of noticed you said ‘attributed’? Didn’t he say it? It sounds like kind of a Darwin thing to say. Not that I really know what a Darwin thing to say is, but you know what I mean?”

“It frightens me to say that I know exactly what you mean,” Giles replied. “I have read it being posited as a direct quote from Darwin, but also that many scholars insist that it is a misattribution that has now been disseminated into popular culture. That it is in most likely an adaptation of some lines from Darwin’s The Origin of Species.”

“An adaptation?” Xander repeated. “There’s that word again.”

Giles smiled. “Yes. You might even call it ‘Darwin-evolved’.”

“Wow, funny thing evolution.”

“Indeed it is. For example, who knew that the world’s most irritating 16-year-old boy could evolve into a grown, relatively sensible man who could make connections between spells, slayers and evolution?”

Xander grinned. “And who knew that the world’s stuffiest pretend librarian repressing his hidden demon-raising past could adapt to become a guy who’d be openly throwing back the good stuff at three in the afternoon to regain a little piece of mind?”

“Touché,” Giles acknowledged. “And in years to come, who would believe that there was ever a time when there was only one Slayer expected to stand on her own without a support system and fight against the darkness? Who would ever believe that such a ridiculous system could ever survive for more than a short time?” Giles raised his glass. It still had a dribble of whisky in the bottom. “Here’s to adaptation,” he said. “I believe it is a survival skill.”

Xander returned the toast. “To adaptation.” He took a sip of his drink, then chuckled. “I’m all about the survival,” he said. “But just so you know, I’m going to leave it to you to tell Buffy she’s a fossil. You being Head Watcher and all.”

“Your generosity overwhelms me, Xander.”

“Got your back, big guy.”

Giles nodded. “I know you do. Now I just have to remind Buffy that we have her back too. Hers and all the Slayers.”

“Giles.” Xander bent down and put his glass down on the tiled hearth and picked up the fossil from the arm of his chair. He held it out. “I want you to take this.”

“But it belongs to you,” Giles protested. “It’s your talisman. Your memory of your uncle and all that entails.”

“And I have those memories. They don’t go away. But it would mean a lot to me if you took it. At least hold it in trust for me. For all of us, as a reminder that the world’s most irritating 16-year-old boy grew up and discovered he could talk to the world’s stuffiest pretend librarian about important things.”

Giles took the fossil from Xander’s palm and cradled it in his own. “Then I will treasure it and deem it to be an important thing, because it is.” He traced his fingertips back down the skeletal outline of the trilobite. “It will be our compass in stone. A reminder of the direction we came from and the way we must move forward if we are to survive.”

Xander smiled. “I can live with that.”

Giles stood. “And with all that in mind, if you don’t object to me abandoning you, I need to talk to Buffy.”

“Go for it. You’ll be fine. So will she.”

“Thank you, Xander.” Giles paused, then smiled. “I’m glad you sought me out today.”

“I’m glad I did the seeking.”

Giles nodded and walked across the room to the French doors. For the briefest breath he hesitated, then he straightened his back, opened the doors and walked out into the sunshine, watching as Buffy walked up the garden to meet him. The small rock was warm in his hand, full of the weight of history, of the life held within it and all it symbolised. It was a fierce promise to Buffy, his Slayer, to the two Slayers that had died in South America, and to all the Slayers past, present and future that their Watchers would stand beside them, not behind them.

That they would adapt. And they would survive.

Fin


End file.
